August 12, 2017

Donald Trump

Michael Nigro/Pacific Press via ZUMA

For indispensable reporting on the coronavirus crisis, the election, and more, subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily newsletter.

This morning, mostly in passing, I mentioned that I couldn’t quite tell exactly who Donald Trump was condemning in his tweets about last night’s march by white nationalists in Charlottesville. I’ve been out all day since then and just got home. The first thing I read about were the deaths and injuries in today’s march: one woman was killed by a car that rammed into the crowd; two police officers died in a helicopter crash; and dozens more were injured. And what does our president have to say about that?

We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides, on many sides.

And this:


What a miserable little race-baiting piece of shit. Our country can’t be rid of him soon enough.

DOES IT FEEL LIKE POLITICS IS AT A BREAKING POINT?

Headshot of Editor in Chief of Mother Jones, Clara Jeffery

It sure feels that way to me, and here at Mother Jones, we’ve been thinking a lot about what journalism needs to do differently, and how we can have the biggest impact.

We kept coming back to one word: corruption. Democracy and the rule of law being undermined by those with wealth and power for their own gain. So we're launching an ambitious Mother Jones Corruption Project to do deep, time-intensive reporting on systemic corruption, and asking the MoJo community to help crowdfund it.

We aim to hire, build a team, and give them the time and space needed to understand how we got here and how we might get out. We want to dig into the forces and decisions that have allowed massive conflicts of interest, influence peddling, and win-at-all-costs politics to flourish.

It's unlike anything we've done, and we have seed funding to get started, but we're looking to raise $500,000 from readers by July when we'll be making key budgeting decisions—and the more resources we have by then, the deeper we can dig. If our plan sounds good to you, please help kickstart it with a tax-deductible donation today.

Thanks for reading—whether or not you can pitch in today, or ever, I'm glad you're with us.

Signed by Clara Jeffery

Clara Jeffery, Editor-in-Chief

We Recommend

Latest